We realize we left everyone in suspense for the GNT Flight A finals in our last four-flight GNT update. As a reminder, GNT Flight A is open to all District 24 residents as of September 2019 who had fewer than 6000 masterpoints, and uses the ACBL Open Chart for allowed methods and conventions (Flight B uses Basic+, and Flight C uses Basic).
Congratulations to Igor Milman, Oleg Rubinchik, Albert Shekhter, and Florin Neamtu for winning the 2019-2020 GNT-A Season. Each player will receive 40 gold pigmented masterpoints and a blue ribbon qualifier. Under the current CoC, defending champions also receive favorable seeding for next year.
For placing 2nd, the team of Bill Dinner, David Joseph, Dina Schechter, and Bart Cirker will each receive 30 gold pigmented masterpoints and a blue ribbon qualifier.
Normally, the winners would have represented New York City and Long Island in the national finals! However, due to the Montreal 2020 NABC cancellation, we will hold a new GNT District Final for next year. We welcome all teams to compete again!
More On Defending Champions and Favorable Seeding
In practice, the District GNT conditions of contest intentionally minimize the importance of seeding. However, there are cases where seeding matters. When exactly 8 teams show up, the conditions call for a 3 round KO in the championship flight. In all flights, when there are exactly 10 teams or 12+ teams, the teams are split into two groups of equal strength, with either 2 or 4 teams surviving in each group.
How do we determine groups of equal strength? For the championship flight, the director in charge and GNT coordinator formed a seeding committee that was familiar with the approximate strength of each team. In the lower flights, the director in charge and GNT coordinator seeded teams by team avg masterpoints. Seed 1, 3, 5, etc were in group 1, and Seed 2,4,6 etc were in group 2. However, when there were an odd number of total teams, the last seeded team was placed in group 2 (therefore, group 2 eliminated more teams after Day 1).
The GNT Committee for the 2020-2021 will review seeding rules and adjust as appropriate. Ideally, seeding would have zero impact by holding a full round robin in the opening round. However, full round robins require a match between all teams in the field, and squeezing in too many rounds into one day is impractical – either the day drags on too long or the rounds are too short. The national finals has 25+ teams on the opening day, and they choose an 8-round swiss with no playbacks to seed 16 KO survivors. We will discuss the pros and cons of each method in greater depth over the coming weeks, and we welcome feedback!